Gold Nugget Fever and Dunbar’s Number

A couple of days ago I said farewell to social networks. I removed my Facebook and Twitter accounts from Digsby and continued on my merry little way just bursting with productivity since I wasn’t spending any time staying updated.

I was slinging code left and right. But then I kinda got stuck and needed a break. It was an easy problem, I just need a short breather to let my brain figure it out. So I went to Google Reader like I always do. But dang, I had already read all of the worth-reading blogs. So I did the next-best thing. Fark.

Ok, there’s really nothing GOOD about Fark other than it’s entertainment value. There’s plenty there, but it’s kinda like sitting down to watch TV and just flipping through the channel. Rarely do I enjoy it but it passes the time.

Well the next time I actually had something GOOD to read in my blog list I read this article from Seth Godin about Dunbar’s law.   I realized that one of the things that wasn’t working for me about social networking was that I was attempting to break that law and it just wasn’t working. It never works. “Dunbar postulated that the typical human being can only have 150 friends. . .  After that, we just aren’t cognitively organized to handle and track new people easily.” I actually think that my number is more like 20.  Maybe. Once I realized my mistake I decided to try again.

This time I installed a different Social app, TweetDeck. It’s another fantastic Air app that I’m having a great experience with. With TweetDeck I was able to filter my Facebook friends down into a manageable (and very small) list. I get only a dozen or so Facebook updates a day from only those people that I actually care about.

Same thing with Twitter. I was getting some REALLY great information from all of those flash guys I was following and I found that I was really missing that stuff. So I just filtered my following list down. I no longer feel obligated to follow EVERYTHING that comes in, but when I have a couple of minutes when my brain needs to work without me then I’ve got a few things to read. I’m still sick of all the re-tweets and I wish that there was some “rating” mechanism that I could use to filter incoming tweets. @theFlashBum I’m still on the fence about you. You send me great stuff but there’s just so much . . . dirt . . . in with the nuggets.

But this whole process has gotten me thinking a lot about my communication. I used to spend so much time thinking and preparing for blog entries (both personal and professional). Perhaps you couldn’t tell, I’ve never been a fantastic writer. But I’m gonna quit that. I should be writing for myself anyway. If others want to read it then fine. I hope you get something good from it. Or are at least entertained for a moment. So look for a lot more (and less grammatically correct) posts to come. This isn’t a New Year’s resolution, it’s one of those important ones that I’ll actually stick with.